Mobile devices take more viewing time

NEW YORK: Mobile devices are taking an ever greater share of video viewing occasions, with live streams viewed via the devices significantly more popular than video on demand, new research has stated.

Ooyala, the streaming media platform, measured the viewing habits of nearly 200m unique viewers among its partners in 130 countries, including Food Network, TVGuide, ESPN, Dell, the Times and Telegraph, for its Q1 Video Index report.

It found that video views on mobile devices rose by 19% in the first quarter compared to the final quarter of 2012 and now accounted for 10% of all views. The comparable figure for the first quarter of 2012 was 4% of all views, reported MediaPost.

More than half the viewing time was spent on long-form videos that lasted more than ten minutes, at 53% of smartphone video views and 52% of tablet views.

Some 40% of smartphone views were of videos that lasted 30 minutes or more, but for the longest forms of video (60 minutes or more) tablets were the most-used platform, accounting for 25% all video views.

"With viewers tuning in to their favorite long-form premium programming on all connected screens, video publishers have more opportunities to place targeted mid-roll ads within their content," the report added.

"Savvy media publishers will use cutting-edge video analytics to understand and monetize plays on different device types."

Live streams were also far more popular than video on demand, as Ooyala established that the time spent on live video by tablet users was an average of 16 minutes, or four times longer than the time spent with on-demand video.